'It's a cold world...'
Malcolm Lawrence (malcolm@wolfenet.com)
Mon, 01 Dec 1997 00:21:46 -0800
I just found this piece and thought I'd share it.
Love,
Malcs
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'It's a cold world ...'
Girl survives suicide pact only to be ostracized in hometown
November 30, 1997
Web posted at: 12:01 p.m. EST (1701 GMT)
ROBBINSVILLE, North Carolina (AP) -- Tragedy
followed
Jenny back to Robbinsville, and the people of this
tiny mountain
town wanted none of it.
They were afraid. Mothers would not let their sons
talk to her.
One paid a high schooler $20 a week to protect her
daughter on
walks home from the bus stop after she and Jenny
squabbled.
They were angry. They blamed Jenny Waldroup for
what
happened 20 months ago to the two people she loved
most --
Josh Rogers and Kevin "Peck" Hyde, 15-year-olds
who died in a
suicide pact in which Jenny, too, was supposed to
die.
But Jenny didn't die. Now, all of 14 years old,
she is a pariah.
Jenny's brother overheard classmates in the halls.
"Jenny should
have shot herself," they whispered.
Josh's cousin confronted her at a friend's house.
"I hate you!" he
shouted. "You killed Josh!"
"I didn't!" Jenny yelled back, breaking into tears
and running out of
the house. She jumped a split rail fence and
scrambled hand over
hand up the wooded mountainside, not stopping
until she ran out of
breath.
But in a town of 750 people, there is nowhere to
hide. And when
three other young men killed themselves, this
blond-haired girl was
treated as if she were Robbinsville's own Angel of
Death.
A life full of fear
No angel has ever had to endure a life like
Jenny's.
She would lock herself in her room for hours,
afraid of her father, a
Vietnam veteran who suffered from post traumatic
stress disorder.
Some nights, he would roam the house with gun in
hand, believing
he was still fighting in the jungles. And she
always seemed to be
fending off an older brother, who would hit her
much as his two
older brothers had hit him.
Often, Jenny scratched her skin with a pin or a
staple until it bled.
Then she met Josh and became infatuated with the
bashful boy
who called her "Pooh Bear." But Peck -- Josh's
best friend -- also
loved her. One afternoon in April 1996, he
demanded that Jenny
choose between the two. She chose Josh, and that's
when their
lives began to unravel.
They had cut classes, and they were afraid their
truancy would
bring them trouble. So they stole a car and took
off down a
mountain road, determined that the only way they
would return
would be in a box.
Peck had his father's gun. Hungry and out of
money, they held up a
gas station. In three days, they got as far as
Arkansas. When
police noticed them driving erratically and tried
to pull them over,
Josh pulled out the gun.
The suicide pact had called for one of the boys to
shoot Jenny
before they shot themselves. Jenny survived
because neither could
take the life of the blue-eyed girl they adored.
Jenny spent the next month in a mental health
facility on suicide
watch.
She was released to attend the funeral. Josh's
father and
grandmother invited Jenny to sit with them, but
Josh's mother
refused to enter the church as long as Jenny was
inside. Finally, the
minister coaxed her in.
In the coffins, Jenny placed angel figurines and
her cherished
dream-catcher earrings and necklace.
The church was packed.
"Mama, I wish they could see how they were loved,"
Jenny
whispered. "If they had only known."
"Yes, Jenny," her mother said. "This town loved
them."
'She was branded, marked'
The fact is, both boys were troubled.
Rogers (L) and Hyde died in what was supposed
to be a triple
suicide
Josh lived with his father and was often at odds
with his mother,
who lived across town. And though "Peck" often
appeared
boisterous and outgoing, he grieved for his mother
who had died a
year earlier. Since then, he had tried twice to
kill himself.
Nonetheless, the townspeople blamed Jenny. She was
a living
symbol of out-of-control youth -- of everything
parents feared for
their own children.
Jenny was no innocent, people gossiped -- she had
pitted two fine
boys against each other. Even though police ruled
the deaths
suicides, some people believed Jenny pulled the
trigger.
And look how she went to that school dance so soon
after the
suicides. Going on with life as if nothing ever
happened!
Like many small towns, gossip spreads fast here,
at the local
uniform factory and furniture mill and after
church on Sunday.
"She was branded, marked. That was it," said Janie
Wiggins, one
of a few parents who stuck by Jenny. "People don't
let you live
things down here."
For a while, Jenny fought back. She threatened to
beat up her
oppressors. She could swing hard. She had learned
from her
brothers how to fight. She sneaked cigarettes and
started drinking
alcohol.
School officials recommended she transfer to a
school for troubled
youths, but her parents objected.
"I lost everything in a minute that was important
to me," Jenny said
in an interview last month. "When I got back,
death itself didn't
scare me no more 'cause I didn't care. I had so
much in me I
wanted to get out and I didn't know how."
She found solace in writing poetry. "That's the
only way I can stay
alive is to write. When I'm writing, it's like
taking one ounce of
pressure off me."
Jenny didn't bother with proper spelling and
grammar, she just let
the words flow onto scraps of paper.
"It's a cold world
Its filled with empty dreams.
Things I use to love.
Friends who use to love me.
It's a cold world
Filled with hate.
The thing that could set me free.
Fled from this cold world."
Time has not brought healing. Instead, a string of
tragedies has left
Robbinsville parents even more fearful that Jenny
might suck their
own children into suicide.
Town shaken as more suicides follow
When Josh and Peck died, suicide was an anomaly in
Robbinsville.
But within the year, three other young men shot
themselves.
First, a man in his 20s killed himself after his
girlfriend broke up
with him. Then a 16-year-old died when he was
playing a form of
Russian roulette with friends -- apparently
looking into the barrel
before he fired each time. It was ruled an
accident, but parents
were terrified.
And just a week before the anniversary of Josh's
and Peck's
deaths, one of Peck's best friends told Jenny that
he wanted to die.
Coy Phillips had been depressed since his mother
died, and he had
been sent to a foster home.
"He knew I knew what it was like," Jenny said. "I
told him not to
do it, and he wouldn't listen to me. I told him it
wasn't the right
way. It was wrong and it does hurt."
She told school counselors that Coy needed help.
They called him
in, but the 15-year-old went home and shot himself
anyway.
After that, rumors flew that Jenny was recruiting
people for suicide
pacts, that she played with a Ouija board to
contact Josh and
Peck.
When two girls absconded with a car from their
parents' driveway
for a joyride, they blamed Jenny's stolen car
escapade for giving
them the idea.
"People want to blame me for every kid that dies,"
said Jenny, her
sweet Southern drawl quivering. "I walk down the
street and they
look at me with hatred."
One Sunday, Jenny's Baptist minister preached that
anyone who
committed suicide would go straight to hell. The
thought of Josh
and Peck burning in the fires of hell terrified
Jenny. She mustered
all her strength to remain in her pew.
But she couldn't find the fortitude to stay in
school. Last spring,
with two months left in the school year, Jenny
dropped out.
"It's not worth it here," Jenny said. "Everybody
goes around saying
this is heaven because it's so isolated. But to me
and people who
have problems it's hell because of the isolation."
Run out of town
The only solution was to leave Robbinsville, she
decided.
"Robbinsville ran Jenny out of town," said her
father, Kenneth
Waldroup, still bitter at the town he said showed
little compassion
for his child.
And so earlier this fall, he and Jenny moved to
the Knoxville area
-- a two-hour drive. They rented an apartment and
Jenny enrolled
in eighth grade while her mom, a school teacher,
remained in
Robbinsville to support them.
It was a fresh start for Jenny. She made friends
who didn't know
about her past, who didn't judge her, who weren't
afraid of her.
The first day of school, she exchanged 32 phone
numbers with
students who seemed genuinely interested in being
her friend. She
could walk with her head up, smiling unabashedly
on campus.
But then her father had a stress disorder relapse.
He couldn't take
care of Jenny much less himself. He needed his
wife and Jenny
needed her mother, he decided, so they moved back
to
Robbinsville in October.
Jenny tried to look on the bright side. She had
been missing her
mother and a couple of loyal friends, anyway.
Besides, maybe she
would be accepted this time.
On a recent weekend home, the mother of one of her
friends had
invited her to dinner and apologized for refusing
to allow her
daughter to socialize with Jenny.
But on Jenny's second day back at school in
Robbinsville, Mrs.
Waldroup received a phone call from a worried
mother. Was it
true that Jenny was going to be paid to beat up
her daughter? the
mother asked.
The next weekend, Jenny invited a few girls over
for a slumber
party. The father of one called Jenny's father. He
had a question:
"Will my daughter be safe here with Jenny?"
Copyright 1997 The Associated Press. All rights
reserved. This
material may not be published, broadcast,
rewritten, or
redistributed.